Event participant Greg Pincus stated that it is Los Angeles is a different place without all of the vehicles. But Attorney Ehline says: “Los Angeles has a long way to go before anyone should consider riding a bicycle on that 7.5 mile stretch that they shut down last Sunday.”

Lawyer, please.

I usually ride that exact route along 4th, 6th and 7th Streets when I go Downtown, and I’m not dead yet. In fact, I choose those streets because I feel a lot safer there than I do on busier boulevards just a few blocks away, even at rush hour. As do hundreds, if not thousands, of other cyclists every day.

Despite the recently adopted bike plan, L.A. stills lacks proper infrastructure, and will for decades to come until the plan is finally built out. Even then, it will take a massive investment to repave and patch the city’s crumbling streets before they offer the safety Angeleno cyclists deserve.

Then there’s the city’s notoriously careless, aggressive and distracted drivers, many of whom seem would seem to require major surgery to pry their precious cell phones from their faces. Let alone their foot off the gas pedal.

Yet in the overwhelming majority of cases, it only takes a modicum of care to get from here to there safely. And enjoyably.

I don’t know Michael P. Ehline, Esq. For all I know, he may be an excellent and caring attorney, exactly the sort of person every cyclist wants in his or her corner when it all hits the fan.

But to suggest that cyclists take their lives in their hands to ride on what are actually some of the city’s better bike streets isn’t exactly the best way to demonstrate expertise in the subject.

Meanwhile, the deputy who initially stopped Marco Antonio Valencia confirmed on the witness stand that Valencia told him “Shoot me, my life is over” as he was being detained. The arrest came minutes after the hit-and-run collision that took the life of Joseph Novotny and seriously injured three other riders, suggesting that Valencia was well aware of what he had just done.

Event participant Greg Pincus stated that it is Los Angeles is a different place without all of the vehicles. But Attorney Ehline says: “Los Angeles has a long way to go before anyone should consider riding a bicycle on that 7.5 mile stretch that they shut down last Sunday.”

Lawyer, please.

I usually ride that exact route along 4th, 6th and 7th Streets when I go Downtown, and I’m not dead yet. In fact, I choose those streets because I feel a lot safer there than I do on busier boulevards just a few blocks away, even at rush hour. As do hundreds, if not thousands, of other cyclists every day.

Despite the recently adopted bike plan, L.A. stills lacks proper infrastructure, and will for decades to come until the plan is finally built out. Even then, it will take a massive investment to repave and patch the city’s crumbling streets before they offer the safety Angeleno cyclists deserve.

Then there’s the city’s notoriously careless, aggressive and distracted drivers, many of whom seem would seem to require major surgery to pry their precious cell phones from their faces. Let alone their foot off the gas pedal.

Yet in the overwhelming majority of cases, it only takes a modicum of care to get from here to there safely. And enjoyably.

I don’t know Michael P. Ehline, Esq. For all I know, he may be an excellent and caring attorney, exactly the sort of person every cyclist wants in his or her corner when it all hits the fan.

But to suggest that cyclists take their lives in their hands to ride on what are actually some of the city’s better bike streets isn’t exactly the best way to demonstrate expertise in the subject.

Meanwhile, the deputy who initially stopped Marco Antonio Valencia confirmed on the witness stand that Valencia told him “Shoot me, my life is over” as he was being detained. The arrest came minutes after the hit-and-run collision that took the life of Joseph Novotny and seriously injured three other riders, suggesting that Valencia was well aware of what he had just done.